The whole attitude toward migration is absolutely insane, but that's what racism does to people. We have an aging population, but young people from other countries want to flood into our country? Eh, we'd better militarize the border and set up concentration camps, don't want these parasites consuming our resources.
You keep seeing racism everywhere.
The aging population argument is worse than nonsense, it's deliberately deceitful. There is youth unemployment in Europe. Migrants will not be welcome so long as that continues. These countries
do not need immigrants. If you position is based on believing a lie ("immigrants are necessary") all your actions will be wrongheaded. As has been wrongheaded the position held by several political parties in Europe that are collapsing due to (among other things) their pro-immigration policies.
This thread was supposed to be a discussion on how the EU could possible deal with member states that refuse to obey EU policy. The whole migrant thing was just supposed to be a catalyst for that discussion since that seems to be the most divisive issue in the EU right now.
The same way all empires have dealt with rebellious provinces: send in the army and terrorize those populations into submission. Except the EU does not have an army -
yet. It must be destroyed before the french and the germans put one together, because then it'll have another big war.
Well. Cut voting rights and lose cash. They've threatened to do it with Poland and because of that they have backed off on some of their most controversial policies. Of course, since the EU is a democracy other countries can veto, so it's not that easy.
The EU can only use really "cash" (or actually the threat of economic disruption caused by a financial freeze) as a weapon against those countries that were foolish enough to join the Euro. For the other countries the only cash controlled by the EU are the structural funds, which are a bribe to local elites (encouraging corruption is a
feature). But when politics shift to an anti-EU stance those elites have rejected the bribe already.
In any case the EU
now won't use any weapons against the eastern european countries, for one very simple reason: they have options, can leave. If western Europe won't trade with them, they'll trade with eastern Europe, Russia and Asia, the US, Middle East,South America... the world is vast beyond the EU. If they are pushed enough they'll desert the Greater European Co-prosperity Sphere. And they cannot be just suppressed militarily because the russians are there currently with a reorganized army capable of stepping in if the germans and french try to pull an "european civil war". The 90s when France/Germany could easily overthrow governments are over. Ukraine did not go well... But absent that "threat" they'd have already pushed through an EU army to make sure no one could leave.
There are some Balkan countries trying to get accepted by the EU to get in. Some unresolved border issues need to be settled first.
As a Minister of Foreign Affairs of one of those countries said at the meeting in the UK this week: “countries that are in the EU have perhaps forgotten how cold it can be outside the EU”
Cold indeed when the big powers of the EU break up those countries, send in weapons to arm rebel groups and finally bomb them outright...
So it totally depends on who is doing what. Is it a decision by the commision or the council of ministers? In both the member state governments are represented and thus hae agreed to the decision they are now supposedly violating. But no, the commisison or the council of course does not have a police force. And their other tools are weak, but that is supposed to be like this. Now there‘s also the courts and the „parliament“ (it‘s not a true parliament) and all those things that have more to do with individual people.
